Peacocks

I look around me and find that many of the people I was running with just a few years ago are no longer out there on a regular basis. It happens so slowly it is almost unremarkable. An injury, a health problem, the demands of family life, or simply the desire to move on to some other form of exercise. But the facts are clear. People don't last a long time as Ultra Runners. It takes too much time, to great a commitment, to much pain, and, yes, too much suffering. In the end life takes its toll and we lose our running friends, or we fall by the wayside ourselves.

Injuries seem to be the greatest problem. Thigh and hip problems seem to be the most devastating. Cheryl's fight against that is by far the most admirable attempt to keep moving that I have seen. That she is still out there on the trails is amazing. Then there are all the people with foot injuries, and ankle problems. Many of these could have been avoided by better training, or more attention to gear, but for the most part they just happened to seasoned runners. Many were avoidable, like my present knee problems, the result of becoming too involved in a particular race and trying to gain a few extra minutes at the cost of some strained tendons. If you are going to be out there on a regular basis it does not pay to be as fast as you think you can be. It doesn't pay to have too much hustle. Better to just putz along far behind where you think you could be and do the distance, no matter what the time.

It's a young season and we start it with some ridiculously short fast runs. I learned my lesson many seasons ago, and if I run I go slow for many miles, or get out there early and do an extra loop just to warm up. These sprints can tear you up. Look around and listen to the chatter that will develop in the veteran ultra runners, there will be all kinds of minor injuries in the next few months when long distance legs are forced to do short distance fast runs. But I show my age I guess. My knees and hips hate this part of the Trail Series, and I'll likely be standing out somewhere telling people where to go, or misdirecting my friends, or just playing 'table guy', until the races move over 20 miles.

Don't know what this has to do with Peacocks, except it is the race of the season and I am out there already moving slowly up those steeps, packing an extra twenty pounds that I collected during the break after the HURT. It will take me many months to drop back down, to be able to actually walk fast down the hills, to get back my endless legs. Problem is I don't have many months before I am off on some long expeditions. But they are not Peacocks, and even at less than 60, it is the one that waits silently out there in the distance.

........got to Peacocks late Saturday morning, waited for Don, who it tourned out is injured, went up on my own, ran into Rex, Jan, and Julie, and did a fast shuffle out to the Rock Pile and back (12m). Not as far as last week, but I had lots of reasons not to be out there and went up anyway. This time of year, well, that is better than rolling over and sleeping that extra three hours.

A Good Week and the Art of Suffering

Did a Hard Hot Highway on Wednesday and made it 10+ miles before Don and Leon drove up and gave me lift to Makapu'u. We did three repeats, so it made it about 16 miles for the day. Slow on the highway, but right now its the distance not the pace.



I thought I was going to meet Don out at Peacocks on Saturday, but when I got out there he wasn't there. So I did a solo up and over. Ran into a guy named Fred from Hawaii Trail and Mountain. Maybe in his late sixties or early seventies. He and his wife were out marking trail for the HTM Sunday hike. The guy knew all kinds of side trails and pointed them out to me as we walked up toward the top of Kealia. He left me at 'Lombard' Street. at the bottom of that quick left and up the steep to the top of the hill that has the quick down.



Did the old one hour, one hour, one hour pace, or a bit slower. Ran into Rob at the bottom of Long Road and turned around and went back up with him. I was really ready to bag it and go back the road, but Rob came out early and caught me still on Long Road. He put up with me as we made our way back up and over. He turned at Kealia and went back. I headed down Kealia to the airport. I sat there for a few minutes, drove over and took a quick shower, and stopped at the bottom of long road at about 1:20 or so maybe 1:30 from the time I left Rob. Some bikers told me he had flown by them and was already gone. Rob had to get home to take care of the kids. I had slowed him down, and I guess he had to make up the time getting out of there. Pretty impressive actually.



I was thinking about the Art of Suffering on the way up the Kealia switchbacks. Not that I was suffering much, but it hit me that training is largely just increasing levels of suffering and pain so that we become inured to it over time. Good training is good suffering. Nothing like doing a HURT Loop on a cold windy and wet night, or a Peacock on the hot and sunny day when the humidity is about 100 percent. I didn't suffer much today until I had to chase Rob up long road, and then it was agony. I was carrying a lot of weight in my pack, and I'm not in shape, and it was a nasty few miles.



But to get back to the suffering. It is easy to suffer. Just look at all the couch potatoes out there who sit around, stuffing their faces, drinking, getting bored, and ultimately going into some depressive state that causes great suffering. Then many of 'em do drugs or alcohol to alleviate their suffering and suffer even more. There is no finesse to their suffering. It is anti-evolutionary. And in the end it will kill 'em.



Runners, on the other-hand, go out and push themselves to the physical edge. They suffer from the fatigue, the pain, the many facets of over exertion. They suffer as they endure the elements and the break down of their bodies. But the suffering has some purpose. Its not an afterthought. Runners seek suffering like the knights of the round table sought the Holy Grail. Suffering is the runner's holy grail. Good training, adequate suffering, leads to a mind and body that understand the task at hand, and when the eventual event comes upon them, they move through the reality already hardened to the levels of suffering that are required of them. They may even transcend their training and achieve greater physical feats than they had anticipated.



And when the event is over, and this is the key to the art of suffering, the body fills with a surge of endorphins and seratonin that fills them with an incredible sense of wellbeing. The internal chemical mix is so great that it is likely to be better than morphine,which only mimics these wondrous internal secretions. So strong are these surges that it is not uncommon for a runner to find him or herself sitting transfixed in a chair a day after a major run with a dumb smile on their face, just zoning on existence. It is everything the couch potato wants and seeks but can never honestly enjoy.



It is almost as if suffering is a one-way street. The runner has discovered how to run down that street in the right direction. Others make their way up the road going the wrong way and it never fails to bring them even greater suffering of a kind that has no internal blessing to it.



The runner suffers physical hardship and is rewarded with a natural set of mind blowing chemicals. Others take a wide array of mind blowing chemicals only to find that they ultimately suffer great hardship as a result. A runner is made stronger, more healthy and often is rewarded with a longer life. Those coming the wrong way up Suffering Road, find themselves physically off kilter, weaker, and facing an array of death inducing illnesses.



Life is largely suffering, it is human nature to suffer. However the evolutionary tendencies of mankind are such that the suffering of hard physical work or training provokes internal bliss. A certain degree of physical suffering is necessary for the creation of a healthy human being. We are built that way. Modern life, on the other hand, has turned this fact on its head. Today people seek to short cut the route to mind blowing reality only to find themselves deep into heavy duty suffering.



As a culture we are generally quite sick because we have turned our backs on the evolutionary path of mankind. The guru's call this social evolution. But they do so without fully comprehending the reality of just who we are. We are still the siblings of Paleolithic man. Denying this leads to catastrophe, and each civilization after the next has fallen into ruin because we fail to admit that we have not really changed in the last ten thousand years, and understand who we continue to be.


As individuals we can at least recognize that there is an art to suffering, inevitable suffering. And we can attempt to create a routine of suffering that reflects our evolutionary character and allows our bodies to buffer the travails of our existence. We become more whole through the art of suffering.



Run well, run far, and go home and sleep undisturbed. Aloha.

Out and Back

I've been pretty slack at getting out. A few miles here or there, but mostly trying to take care of a lot of things that have piled up. Yesterday I missed a Saturday run to help Don do some work around his house, and when Cheryl mentioned that she and some others were going to do Maunawili I told her I'd be there. Well, I got there but about 15 minutes late, perhaps later, and Cheryl and the gang were long gone.

I headed after them and was immediately hit by a lot of tightness that had been building up. It took me miles just to be able to jog a bit. That's OK, as it is SOP for me, but I was not even walking fast. In addition there was a lot of debris on the trail and I spent some time clearing it when I ran into it. I started pushing in an out of the valleys that line the high cliffs of Maunawili and was expecting to come around a ridge and hear them ahead of me. It didn't happen.

I pushed on, jogging hard for moderate periods, but still no sight or sound of them. Finally I realized they were likely to be doing a one way, and that I might never see them if I didn't speedup. So I ran for a while. It didn't matter, and I got to the bottom with no sight of them. I'd planned on doing an out and back so that was no problem, but I'd hoped to get some water from them before they headed back up by car. Missing them was momentarily unsettling as I hadn't checked my water, and getting caught out on Maunawili without water is pretty nasty. As it was I had 40 oz, and found a water bottle stashed in the bushes. It was enough to head out with 80 oz, more than enough at the pace I was doing.

It was good to be out there. Good to have that time to myself. As usual, after moaning about things I settled down and started to figure some stuff out. Maunawili is always a place that I seem to come out of with a better attitude and some solutions in mind. Today it was stunningly beautiful. The ocean was a deep blue, the hills were a mix of rich greens, the birds were out, and the wild orchids were blooming. And it was great to feel that stress of the climb.

Got home, showered, ate a bit, sat down for a hour, and got dressed and went to work at Hospice. Dietary, so it is four hours and not that hard. Even so....I had trouble getting things done correctly and on time. It didn't help that the washing machine wasn't working correctly and I had to dick around with that for an hour.

22 Miles. It took an hour or two too longer than it should have, but it was a necessary first step back toward some reasonable training. We'll see what the week brings.

East Side Circuit

It was an east side circuit today. 45M Plus in 14 Hours or so. Windy always, at times chilly, occasionally rainy, hot, sunny, and long. This was a time on feet (TOF) work out. Very little running or jogging, but at the same time only three significant stops and all of these for less than 15 minutes. My endless legs were showing signs of wear up on Peacocks last week, so I decided I needed some Hard Hot Highway to toughen 'em up. Well I got that and more. The first seven miles was very hard with a lot of pain and muscle cramping. Frogs Legs did no good, so I was ultimately forced to turn to Vitamin I. I don't do that too much any more, but out there on the Kalanianeole, with the wind whippin up and the concrete sending shudders thorough my bones I knew I had to do something. I got a little faster as the 'I' took effect, but mostly it was the 1,2,3,4 pace repeated again and again. I couldn't think beyond that cadence and function very well. Head down, world just what I could see ahead of me, and the effort to move Left, right, left, right...each step done well....left right left right.

So I'm out there weathering this onslought of difficulty and my mind returns to the concept of suffering. Now for those of you who have problems with this idea, lets change the word to endurance. Endurance as a concept of proactive suffering. To gain endurance we go out and seek suffering, gain an understanding of it, and learn how to deal with it. On the other side of this is passive suffering, or disoluteness or dissipation, which an individual expriences through lack of action. Think of these as two sides of the same coin, called suffering.

I believe that suffering is the main topic of Humanity. People talk a lot about it, let it determine the course of their lives, and ultimately do little about it. Human suffering defines humanity, and all religion, philosophy, and societies are primarily attempts to define, or deal with suffering. I'm not going to go into a definition of suffering here, for my purposes here it is that physical and mental trauma that one endures in ultra runs. Consult some bhudist texts if you wish a more detailed analysis.

Ultra runners go thorugh stages of endurance testing. Each stage is defined by our ability to deal with the increased pain or suffering we encounter as we push the envelope of our experience. ---Here we are of course looking at pain and suffering that is not physically detrimental to us. Going out and chopping ones leg off may be an avenue to understanding pain and suffering, but it is not a valid option for an ultra-runner. Part of moving through these stages is comprehending the positive and negative aspects of suffering on the body.

As a runner moves over the ground the mind often moves into a meditative state. Each step creates a wide array of experiences, some benifical, others with negative impacts on the body. As runners move they constantly assess the state of there bodies,